Automakers should seek the advice of doctors and emergency rescue workers in designing cars with high-tech equipment intended to save lives in crashes, an advocacy group said.
Those working in emergency medical services "must be involved long before technology is introduced," said Dr. Jackson Allison, chairman of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America's medical subcommittee, which wrote the report.
General Motors Corp and ATX Technology Inc have developed automatic collision notification systems, or "Mayday" systems, that determine within seconds the severity of a crash and automatically call for help.
Beginning in some GM vehicles next year, the information will be sent to an operator for the OnStar in-vehicle communications system through a handsfree cellular phone connection. The operator can talk to crash victims in the vehicle and conference-call emergency dispatchers with all the information needed to send emergency responders quickly.
The system, which has 2 million subscribers, already alerts OnStar operators when air bags deploy. The improvements will notify operators about accidents that do not trigger air bags and send more information about every crash.
High-end cars made by Mercedes, Lexis and Ford, for example, also offer Mayday systems, Allison said. He'd like to see all cars equipped with them someday so people at every income level can benefit from them.
"There's a lot of technology in the car, and if it were appropriately passed on to EMS responders, they'd know what to do," said MJ Fingland, spokeswoman for the National Highway Transportation Safety Board. "If they knew it was a car going 80kph that crashed they'd know what kind of injuries to prepare for."
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